The Liar's Sister (ARC)

by Sarah A. Denzil

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘This all started because of my mistake. That’s why I’m ending it now.’

  ‘You won’t kill her.’ Rosie moves out of my arms and sits back on her heels, facing Colin. ‘She’s your daughter. You won’t be able to.’

  But Colin simply stares at her, and then at his gun.

  My gaze drifts over to Lynn, who hasn’t said a word. Is this news to her too? Her face is like a Halloween mask, ghostly white and blank. With her nightdress and her dishevelled hair, she could be mad Miss Havisham, ready to set herself alight.

  Mum had no way of knowing that her actions would bring us here, to the cold courtyard of the Murrays’ farm, with the threat of death looming over us. Colin could kill all of us. Even Peter. Even Lynn. Would they fight him if they were threatened?

  ‘He would kill me,’ I say to Peter. ‘And he would kill you too. And your mother. He has nothing to live for any more. Lynn, do you know about his debts, or is that something else he’s kept from you? Do you know anything about what this man is capable of? Ian Dixon lies dead in Buckbell Woods because your husband shot him in the chest. Together, Ian and your husband put a gun in my father’s mouth and made it appear to be suicide. If you don’t believe he’s capable of murder, then think again.’

  ‘Someone get that girl out of my sight,’ she says in a low hiss. ‘All I see is you, Colin. I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier. You look just like each other.’

  Peter snorts. ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘And you.’ Lynn regards her son. ‘What happened to you? You were such a sweet boy. Now I see that Samuel was the kind, gentle one. He was the one who loved his family. You’re nothing to me now. What have you turned him into, Colin? Why have you made him a monster?’

  Colin says nothing, and I watch as the blood drains from Peter’s face. ‘Mum?’

  ‘What did you expect, Peter?’ I say. ‘She just saw you try to break a woman’s wrist. But as the saying goes, like father, like son.’

  His eyes flash with anger.

  ‘How many times has he beaten you, Lynn?’ Rosie says. ‘I remember the night Samuel died. Ian reeled off a few of the crimes your husband had committed. One of those was domestic violence. He’s been beating you your entire marriage, hasn’t he?’

  Colin glowers, but he remains silent. Lynn stares at Rosie and then at me, her body completely rigid.

  ‘Dad, just shoot her,’ Peter says. ‘She deserves to die for what she did to our family. Her lies tore this village apart.’

  ‘Has he raped you?’ I say to Lynn, ignoring Peter. ‘I bet my mother wasn’t his only affair. Does he like to take what he wants no matter the consequences?’

  Colin drives the butt of the gun into my ribs and I land heavily on my side. ‘That’s enough,’ he says quietly.

  He levels the gun at us, and Rosie grasps my hand. There’s no getting out of this situation. Colin made up his mind long ago, and his wife and son are either in shock or brainwashed by him.

  ‘Where did you bury him?’ Lynn asks.

  ‘It’s in a letter,’ Colin says. ‘I left it next to the fridge. It explains everything. They took him to Ingledown Moor, drove a mile up the east road. Then they walked for ten minutes with his body until they found three stones together nestled within the valley. They dug between those stones and buried him, then laid the moor grass back on top. Ian took a photograph of the area the morning after and he’s had it ever since, probably in case he ever felt like blackmailing me.’

  ‘Did he?’ Lynn asks.

  ‘It started with a few hundred here and there when he needed it,’ Colin admits. ‘And then sure enough I was paying him monthly. It was only when John Sharpe decided he was going to talk that things began to unravel. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t regret it, Lynn, and that’s the truth.’

  Lynn gets to her feet and walks over to her husband. ‘If I told you I would forgive you, would you stop this nonsense and live, instead of giving it all up and dying?’

  There are tears in Colin’s eyes as he answers. ‘It’s too late, Lynn. Like the girl said, Dixon’s body is in the woods. I think I killed Jack, too. There’s no way I can come back from that. Not now.’ His chin wobbles and I watch my biological father as his carefully constructed control begins to unspool.

  Gently, Lynn takes the gun from her husband’s hands.

  ‘Mum?’ Peter says. ‘What are you doing?’

  She turns in our direction, with the gun facing us.

  ‘I can’t bear to look at you,’ she tells me.

  ‘None of this is Heather’s fault,’ Rosie says fiercely. ‘She’s the only innocent person in all of this.’

  ‘The lass is right,’ Colin admits. ‘And she was right before. I wasn’t going to shoot Heather. Just her sister.’

  Lynn wipes away her tears, relaxes her hold on the gun and turns to her husband. ‘Thank you for telling me where Samuel is buried.’ Then she raises the gun and pulls the trigger.

  Forty-One

  Heather

  Now

  ‘You should go now, girls.’ Lynn steps away from her husband’s body and faces us. Her nightdress is splashed with a red spray of his blood. The glint of life has gone from her eyes, leaving glazed marbles inside a pale, expressionless face. Before me I see a woman who has let everything go. A dangerous woman. Without hesitation, I take Rosie’s hand in mine and quietly lead her away while Peter sinks to his knees next to his father.

  ‘We have to call the police, Ro,’ I say, as we hurry along the back road. ‘And that means we have to tell them everything.’ I hate to say it, because I know what it means she’ll have to do, but the truth needs to come out. It’s what’s right.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I want to tell them.’

  * * *

  It was on that long walk home in the cold that Rosie finally told me the entire story. It began with her overhearing our mother arguing with Colin Murray, and ended with Dad driving away with Ian Dixon to bury Samuel’s body on the moors, leaving her to tidy up the last of the evidence. We stopped at the place Samuel died, just for a moment, and I wondered whether I truly was better off knowing the truth, or whether I should have let it all lie.

  We walked through the woods to see if we could find Jack. His body lay lifeless on the forest floor. I checked for a pulse, but he was cold. Then we went back to the cottage and called the police, no longer scared that Sergeant Ian Dixon would control the investigation. In a sense, two evils had perished. In another sense, three souls were lost. Four, if you counted Peter Murray.

  I was right that Buckthorpe village had a rotten core, I just didn’t realise that the two people at the heart of it were Ian Dixon and Colin Murray.

  Once we went to the police and the truth came out, it was clear that half the village were aware – or at least had their suspicions – that Samuel’s disappearance was connected to Ian. Most thought that he’d arranged with the Murrays for Samuel to escape arrest. Others believed that Rosie had killed Samuel and Ian Dixon had made it go away. He was known as some sort of fixer around the village. Caught drink-driving? Pay Ian and he’ll make it go away. Want to sell some not-so-kosher produce? Ian will make it happen for you. Keep the pub open until two a.m.? Not a problem, as long as you pay Ian a percentage of the profits.

  And then everything came out about Peter. Not only was he under his father’s influence, but he was a drug dealer. He sold horse tranquillisers, prescription pills and hard drugs. They caught up with him twenty miles out of Buckthorpe, asleep in his car; later, in the interrogation room, he claimed that everything he had done was to save the farm. But nothing worked. Colin drank away a large portion of the money and gave the rest to Ian to keep him quiet.

  If they hadn’t killed my father, I would pity them.

  * * *

  ‘I’m going to ask one more time,’ Rosie says. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  She raises her eyebrows questioningly, and in her expression I see hesitation. We’r
e not the same as we were before. We’re not full sisters. I’m not my father’s daughter. And yet, we’re closer. The barrier of our secrets has finally been broken down, and I see her and feel nothing but love. No fear, no guilt, no anger. Rosie carried our mother’s secrets with her until they broke her down into little pieces. Smashed like the headlight she buried in the woods.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I reply. ‘We’re going to stay in Buckthorpe. Even if the village hate us, we’re staying.’

  Lynn and Peter are both awaiting trial. Ian Dixon is dead. Colin is dead. The Campbells finally admitted to us that they’d stolen an old photo album and Dad’s shotgun out of the house because Ian had threatened them. They’d been storing them and were terrified we’d come in and see what they’d taken. Joan brought them back to us in tears. Rosie hugged her until she stopped crying.

  The photo album contained pictures of Ian with Dad and Colin before the accident. He didn’t want us connecting him to Dad’s death. The shotgun was the murder weapon, now given over to the police. I’m certain Ian was too clever to leave any DNA evidence, but as I was poking around about Samuel’s disappearance, he probably wanted to keep us away from it. The Campbells had a spare key to our house; when I thought I saw someone slip out of the door, it was Bob hurrying away.

  ‘If I end up in prison, you’ll have to live here alone,’ Rosie says.

  ‘You’re not going to prison,’ I say. ‘You were just a kid, Ro. They’ll focus on the real criminals. Like Ian. And, I guess, even Dad.’

  I was always Dad’s favourite; that was what everyone said. Rosie used to say it all the time. But he never knew the truth about me. He believed all his life that I was his, and I’ll never know how he would have reacted if he’d found out. Would he still have loved me?

  What I do know is that there were problems between him and Mum. At least now I understand why he often worked away from the family. One comfort is that there must have been some real love between them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have stayed together after Rosie and I moved out.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I have to catch this train if I’m going to be back tomorrow.’

  I give her a hug and watch her leave. Because we’ve decided to keep the house and live together, Rosie is travelling back to Brighton to collect more of her belongings. I need to go to London soon, too. It’s time to quit my job, give notice on my flat and pack up everything I have, which isn’t a lot. I don’t know if I’ll find a job up here, but the mortgage is paid off on the cottage and I have some savings. Rosie is going to write a novel. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Just stop and learn to be me for a change.

  When I came back to Buckthorpe, I didn’t feel as though my childhood had truly existed. It was akin to a blurry film watched years ago and barely recalled. I couldn’t remember the plot. Maybe that’s a good thing for me now, because almost all of it was a lie. I wasn’t Dad’s daughter; I am the daughter of a violent man. My existence caused problems for everyone around me. And yet my mother told me that she had no regrets. She never regretted the fact that I was born.

  And then I complicated things further by falling in love with my half-brother. Rosie told me how Samuel knew that we were related and decided that he didn’t care. I don’t know what to think of the boy I once loved. Over the last ten years I’ve gone through Rosie accusing him of assault, backed up by other girls from school, the revelation that we were related, and now the revelation that he knew and didn’t tell me.

  I can admit it to myself now, but I never believed that Samuel tried to rape Rosie. Not even on the night she ran home from the woods bruised and upset. No, I never believed it. I thought she must have become confused after someone else hurt her. I thought she might have mixed up a different monster in her mind with the boy I loved.

  I never believed that he hurt her, but I convinced myself that she might have killed him. Her lies got to me. I twisted her into the villain when I should have focused on the adults around us. I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t trust my sister, and why that might be.

  Rosie and I are in the process of sorting through our parents’ belongings and deciding what we want to keep and what can be binned or given away to charity. Neither Mum nor Dad lived extravagantly. Mostly the house is full of books, which Rosie wants to keep. I walk up the stairs in the same way I did as a child, stepping carefully amongst the dusty piles.

  Today I’ve decided to be brave enough to enter the attic armed with a can of spider killer. All I need to do is pull down the last boxes and take them into the living room to begin sorting the contents into piles. Rosie hasn’t much interest in the stuff in the attic, because we know that Mum and Dad stuffed their old bits of crap up there.

  I open the hatch, climb in and grab the first box. It takes me a while to carry them all downstairs, and by the time I’ve finished, I could do with a shower. But it’s worth the extra effort so that I can stick a sitcom on Netflix while I work.

  As I suspected, they’re mostly full of junk. I find our old Halloween costumes: Rosie was a pumpkin, I was a fairy. I take some of Grandad’s old records and pile them to one side. I don’t know much about records, but these might be interesting to play, or potentially worth some money. Then I find Mum’s old jewellery box, which, I realise now, I haven’t seen for ten years. I open it up, expecting to find her old costume jewellery. I know I’m not going to find any old diamonds or gems; her most expensive item was her engagement ring.

  But there is a shiny object nestled within. I pick it up and hold it to the light, and as I do, all the blood drains from my face. It isn’t a forgotten diamond; it’s a shard of hard plastic from a headlight.

  And beneath that shard of plastic is a note.

  Heather, you were always John’s daughter. Whatever you may learn, I did it all for you.

  I hear Jack’s words in my mind: You’ll be wanting to know about your mother.

  Mum was there that night. Rosie didn’t know, but Mum was there.

  Shaking, I put the piece of headlight back in the box, pick up the note and read the rest. It explains everything.

  Forty-Two

  Iris

  Then

  You may think after reading this that I regret the things I did. But I don’t. It’s true that as a young mother, I made a terrible mistake. I mistook a weak man for a man with a good heart. He charmed me, spun me silly with compliments, and made me believe that I was worth loving. And no, that man was not my husband.

  While I love my husband, and always have, he is not an easy man to love. He’s not a man who makes a woman feel special. He’s a good man and he will do anything for his family, but words don’t come easily to him. At first I knew he loved me because he woke me up with a cup of tea each morning, despite the fact that he hated getting up early. He knew how I appreciated being woken up and he did it for me. Then it was just at the weekends. Then he stopped altogether.

  The small changes became big problems. We wouldn’t kiss as often. Then we barely embraced. There were times when we didn’t touch for days. And then he started taking jobs further and further away because they paid more. Away for weeks at a time.

  I thought he was trying to get away from me. In my mind, my marriage was over because he had grown bored of my company.

  Colin showed me the affection I’d become starved of. It was all a lie, but I fell for it in the same way many of us do when we’re desperate for love. Of course, when I found out I was pregnant, he dropped me so fast I hit the ground with an almighty thud. There was no discussion of us leaving our partners and being together. Lynn was already pregnant with Samuel. I had Rosie and John to care for. There was no romance in the end, only a mess.

  Yet out of that mess came you, Heather. My calm and considerate daughter. I loved you just as much as Rosie, I want you to know that.

  Buckthorpe has always been its own contained world with its own set of rules. With the forest surrounding us, we’re cut off from much of the r
est of the country, and we deal with our problems on our own without going to outsiders. But it’s a tiny village, and when there’s a huge secret, that’s when lives become complicated. Neither Lynn nor John knew about the affair and I couldn’t bring myself to tell either. Which is why, when you girls started working at the farm, I was furious with Colin. I also knew I couldn’t stop it, because it would raise too many questions.

  Could I lie and claim you had other things to do in the summer? Lynn knew you didn’t. She knew I was often at my cleaning job and you girls would run around in the garden or ride your ponies in the woods. Like a bloodhound, she would sniff out a lie within moments. And then questions would be asked. Why won’t you let your girls associate with my sons? Aren’t we good enough for you? What’s really going on, Iris?

  The solution came by accident. Rosie overheard the dreaded secret, and for once I had an ally. Oh Rosie, I am sorrier than words can express. I knew in my heart that you were too young to handle such a huge responsibility, and yet I piled it on you anyway. I needed you, but I shouldn’t have put all that pressure on you. I wrongly thought that with you watching over Heather and Samuel, you could step in if anything blossomed between them. What I didn’t anticipate was them falling in love. It felt as though nothing could stop them after that.

  I’m sorry, Rosie. Everything that happened to you after was because of what I said to you. I saw the conflict on your face when you made that false accusation. Later that night, you confessed to me in secret that you’d seen Heather and Samuel kissing, and that in your shocked state you hadn’t known what to do. And then you told me how Samuel knew and didn’t care. He frightened you, Rosie, and you panicked.

  It was at that moment that I considered suggesting you come clean and exonerate Samuel. But you know that I didn’t. Even though Samuel didn’t hurt you, he intended to hurt your sister. He was going to pursue you, Heather, even knowing what he knew. That was inexcusable to me. He did not deserve to be free. In my eyes, he was dangerous. He was everything you said about him, Rosie.